GIOVANNI REGGIANI
reggiani@mit.edu
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
OFFICE CONTACT INFORMATION
MIT Department of Economics
77 Massachusetts Avenue, E19-776p0
Cambridge, MA 02139
reggiani@mit.edu
HOME CONTACT INFORMATION
94 Gore Street, Apt B
Cambridge, MA 02141
Mobile: 617-528-9734
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/reggiani
MIT PLACEMENT OFFICER
Professor Esther Duflo
eduflo@mit.edu
617-258-7013
MIT PLACEMENT ADMINISTRATOR
Ms. Eva Konomi
evako@mit.edu
617-253-8787
Mr. Thomas Dattilo
617-324-5857
DOCTORAL
STUDIES
dattilo@mit.edu
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
PhD, Economics, Expected completion June 2016
DISSERTATION: “Essays on Rational Inattention”
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE AND REFERENCES
Professor Abhijit Banerjee
MIT Department of Economics
77 Massachusetts Avenue, E17-201A
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-253-8855
banerjee@mit.edu
Professor Bengt Holmstrom
MIT Department of Economics
77 Massachusetts Avenue, E17-220
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-253-0506
bengt@mit.edu
Professor George-Marios Angeletos
MIT Department of Economics
77 Massachusetts Avenue, E19-218
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-452-3859
angelet@mit.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
Bocconi University, Milan, Italy
M.Sc. summa cum laude, Economics and Social Sciences
2010
Bocconi University, Milan, Italy
B.A. summa cum laude, Economics and Social Sciences
Honors Exchange Student at Harvard University
2008
GIOVANNI REGGIANI
OCTOBER 2015 -- PAGE 2
CITIZENSHIP
Italy
GENDER:
LANGUAGES
Spanish (native), Italian (native), English (fluent)
FIELDS
Primary Fields: Macro, Theory
Male
Secondary Fields: Political Economics, Financial Economics
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
14.02 Macroeconomics (Undergraduate)
Head Teaching Assistant to Prof. James Poterba
14.02 Macroeconomics (Undergraduate)
Head Teaching Assistant to Prof. Paul Willen
14.454 Financial Crises (Graduate)
Teaching Assistant to Prof. Ricardo Caballero
14.02 Macroeconomics (Undergraduate)
Teaching Assistant to Prof. Fernando Broner
Spring
2015
Fall
2014
Spring
2013
Spring
2013
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
Goldman Sachs, Global Investment Research. Summer Intern
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS
Urban Services Initiative (JPAL and Gates Foundation) 2015
Weiss Family Research Grant 2014
Schultz Fund Research Grant 2013
MIT Fellowship 2010-2012
Bocconi Outstanding Scholar Society (Graduate Merit Award) 2008-2010
Fiat Merit Award 2008
RESEARCH
PAPERS
“Counting votes right: strategic voters versus strategic parties” (Joint with
F. Mezzanotti)
Voters are defined to be strategic if they switch their vote from their favorite
candidate to one of the main contenders in a tossup election. High levels of
strategic voting are a concern for democracy and the allocation efficiency of
government goods. We use a clean quasi experiment to highlight the
shortcomings of previous identification strategies, which fail to fully account for
the strategic behavior of parties. In an ideal experiment, we would want to
observe two identical votes with exogenous variation in the party victory
probability. Among world parliamentary democracies 104 have a unique
Chamber, 78 have two Chambers with different functions, and only one nation
has two Chambers with the same identical functions: Italy. This allows us to
observe two identical votes and therefore a valid counterfactual. In addition, the
majority premiums are calculated at the national level for the Congress ballot
and at the regional level for the Senate one. This provides exogenous variation in
the probability of victory. Because the two Chambers have identical functions, a
sincere voter should vote for the same coalition in the two ballots. A strategic
voter would instead respond to regions’ specific victory probabilities. We
2008
GIOVANNI REGGIANI
OCTOBER 2015 -- PAGE 3
approach this hypothesis with a geographical Regression Discontinuity
approach, which allows us to compare voters across multiple regional
boundaries. We find much smaller estimates (5%) and argue that previous larger
estimates (35% to 80%) confounded strategic parties and strategic voters due to
the use of non-identical votes as counterfactuals.
“Stock Market Performance and Political Proximity: the Costs of Conflict
of Interest”
I conduct a study that estimates the distortions due to conflict of interest during
Berlusconi’s rule over Italy. The identification is based on the efficient market
hypothesis. In particular, I use electoral polls and stock market data to estimate
the effect of surprising electoral outcomes, defined as the difference between
actual and expected electoral results, on the stock market performance of
Berlusconi’s firms. I find evidence that there are substantial distortions due to
conflict of interest: 6% increase of market capitalization per percentage point of
a positive electoral surprise. I then match two of Berlusconi’s companies
operating in the same media sector but in different countries. This allows me to
further test whether the extra returns are due to political distortions under
different regulatory authorities,. I find that the abnormal returns can be ascribed
to “conflict of interest” rather than to the CEO-founder stepping down. Finally, I
perform robustness tests to ensure that the cumulative abnormal returns estimates
are not spurious.
“Optimal Contracts for Information Acquisition with Entropic Costs”
(Joint with A. Clark)
We study a principal-agent problem where the agent is entrusted with collecting
and processing information to make a decision on behalf of a principal and
where the cost of acquiring information is given by the average reduction in the
entropy of the prior. The principal cannot monitor the information acquisition of
the agent and therefore a moral hazard problem arises. The principal can
incentivize the agent to collect information with a contract that depends on the
realized state of the world and the chosen decision. We show that the optimal
contract has a linear structure: the agent receives a fixed fraction of output, a
state dependent payoff, and a decision dependent payoff. This implies that the
optimal contract is linear in differences. We provide conditions on the prior and
output under which the optimal contract is linear.
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
“Slipped my Mind: Hand Washing and Habit Formation” (with R. Hussam
and N. Rigol)
Diarrheal disease and respiratory infection are two leading causes of child
mortality in the developing world, amounting to upwards of 3 million deaths per
year. These deaths are often due to bacterial and viral contamination, deemed to
be largely preventable through improved hand hygiene. Nevertheless, hand
washing with soap is a largely absent phenomenon across the developing world,
GIOVANNI REGGIANI
OCTOBER 2015 -- PAGE 4
particularly in the context of our study, rural West Bengal. We explore a series
of interventions aimed at generating sustained behavioral change in hand
hygiene via habit formation. The project involves two steps: first, we develop a
device which non-invasively measures and monitors hand washing and delivers
objective data on frequency and time of use. We then utilize this device to
design a set of interventions aimed at not only increasing immediate take-up of
hand washing, but also creating a long-term hand washing habit. We explore the
role of information, monitoring, reminders, and monetary incentives in the
transformation of hand washing from a costly to a desired (craved) activity.
Project Poster: http://economics.mit.edu/files/9748